"The movie's audacious irreverence and playful, musical form feel as fresh as ever, as does its call to women to embrace unfettered self-expression by any unconventional means." - Carmen Gray, Village Voice

Varda (CLÈO FROM 5 TO 7, FACES PLACES) maintains that she has been a feminist filmmaker throughout her long and illustrious career. Her direct involvement in the women's movement in the 1970s led her to make her most explicit film on the subject. Characteristically, Varda avoids preachiness by embedding the political deeply in the personal - specifically, the long and winding friendship of two women: the free-spirited Pomme (Mairesse) and the more conventional Suzanne (Liotard). Their friendship begins in 1962, when Pomme helps the weary mother of two to arrange an abortion. Over the next fifteen years, the connection is maintained mainly through postcards, as they experience tragedy, affairs, marriages, separations, abortions, motherhood, and careers, with Suzanne breaking free of her straitlaced rural family to found a Family Planning Center, while Pomme sings in an agit-prop pop group (lyrics written by Varda) and travels far and wide (including a stunning episode in Iran). In the end, it all boils down to "one sings, the other doesn't" - otherwise, Pomme and Suzanne, though so different in personality and social background, are more essentially part of the larger family of women. In French with English subtitles. New 2K DCP digital restoration. (MR)